The Washington Post reports:
Both sides welcomed the Supreme Court’s announcement Tuesday, though climate activists had more reasons to celebrate.
“Today’s orders by the U.S. Supreme Court make it abundantly clear, once and for all, that EPA has the both legal authority and the responsibility to address climate change and the carbon pollution that causes it,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.
However Harry Ng, the American Petroleum Institute’s vice president and general counsel, said the decision to take up half a dozen cases shows “the EPA is seeking to regulate U.S. manufacturing in a way that Congress never planned and never intended.”
“The Clean Air Act clearly only requires pre-construction permits for six specific emissions that impact national air quality – not greenhouse gases,” Ng said. “That kind of overreach can have enormous implications on U.S. competitiveness and the prices that consumers pay for fuel and manufactured goods. We’re pleased that the court has agreed to review our petition – alongside several others – and we look forward to presenting our case.”
The question of how much the Supreme Court could scale back the federal government’s ability to curb greenhouse gas emissions, now that it has taken up a narrow legal challenge, remains unclear.
Sean H. Donahue, the attorney representing several environmental groups that intervened in the case, said even in a worst-case scenario a ruling against his side would not have a major impact because EPA would retain the flexbility to require carbon controls from power plants emitting other criteria pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
“As a matter of emissions reductions, it’s of quite limited import,” Donahue said in an interview.But Stephen Brown, general counsel for the oil refiner Tesoro Corp. said it was “huge” that the justices were willing to review whether EPA has been making unreasonable demands of utilities seeking federal air permits for building facilities.
“That’s exactly what the industry has been complaining about,” Brown said, adding the issue has cropped up because EPA “is trying to fit a political agenda into a statute that was designed for it.”
One interesting wild card in the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision: Justice Samuel A. Alito recused himself from the decision on whether to take up the challenge to EPA’s climate authority. If he also decides to recuse himself from a decision on the case itself it could end in a tie, delivering a win for the agency.
The ACA has nothing to do with the EPA regulations. It takes us from a free market insurance system that requires underwriting to a community rated system. There is a reason why all developed countries have some community rating from using general taxes – the UK and Canada – to Rube Goldberg devices in some European countries. Societal costs for the ACA system depends on utilization. Some increase might occur, but that would be a minor side effect. EPA regulations are a fantastic waste of resources and generate true additional costs.
“…because EPA would retain the flexbility to require carbon controls from power plants emitting other criteria pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.”
The EPA’s brief is real pollution and those emissions count. They can be scrubbed without really having any effect on CO2. Then we get to the cost-benefit analysis: how much reduction of SO2 vs what kind of hikes in electric rates for poor families? And this is something that will be paid by the ratepayers, not by “the wealthy” as DemBamaCare will be or single-payer would be.